


Little Sister

by rougefox



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Now For Something Completely Different, Brother-Sister Relationships, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post - A Storm of Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-08-12 01:20:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7914805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rougefox/pseuds/rougefox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Arya did not leave Sandor Clegane to die on the Trident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Trident

**Author's Note:**

> Short story I wrote because I needed a quick break from my other work. 
> 
> It is very much inspired by the amazing SanSan fic Maslowian Needs by Helholden 
> 
> First part is the Elder Brother finding Sandor and Arya. I added two more holy brothers to this because I thought the Elder Brother could use the help. 
> 
> Also, kind of gross medical stuff, but only in this chapter I swear!
> 
> No beta, and I should really go to bed.

Arya sat cross legged in the grass and watched the big man die. She had wanted to ride away, to go to the Saltpans and get on a boat to the Wall, to Jon who would mess her hair and call her little sister.

 

But Clegane had the money; the food was stored in the saddle bags strapped to his nightmare of a horse and she barely knew how to make a fire. in addition to all that she was at least a week away from the port if Clegane was to be believed before he got himself killed.

 

Arya watched the Hound twitch and mumble. When she tried to get close enough to grab the money pouch on his belt he had lashed out at her. So she stayed a far distance away and waited for blood loss and fever to take him.

 

A couple times he seemed dead, but then would start shouting at unseen specters; sometimes it was his brother, sometimes it was someone named Eleanor, sometimes it was just the words “little bird” over and over. The worst was when he start crying hysterically and whimpering for his mother.

 

Arya had never watched someone die like this. It reminded her of the men in the crow cages outside Stoney Sept. This was worse, she didn't have a bow to end his suffering and she couldn't get close enough to him to use Needle. She should have given him the gift of mercy when he asked, but she was too scared and angry at the time. Last time she tried he swatted her to the ground. Besides his wounds stank and were crawling with things she tried not to think about.

 

So she sat on the banks, watching him die and wondering what to do with herself.

 

***

 

Arya must have dozed off because the next thing she knew someone was gently shaking her awake.

 

A kind hand rested on her shoulder, a soft voice from the dark spoke; “Child, what has happened to your father?”

 

Not quite awake Arya mumbled, “Joffrey cut his head off.”

 

The owner of the hand jerked away before returning to smooth her hair.

 

“You poor child” he whispered and Arya whimpered. No one had touched her so tenderly since her mother all those months ago.

 

Someone had made a fire and she moved from her sleeping spot to curl up next to it. In the dark she could see people moving near the Hound. She could hear him whimpering like a beat dog.

 

She closed her eyes and dreamed of wolves.

 

***

 

The gentle hand shook her awake the next morning. Arya sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. The kind man handed her some bread with a cup of cider. She looked at the men around her; there were three of them all dressed in the rough spun robes of holy men, but the one who now spoke to her looked like he was made to bash people's heads in, not pray for them. They had a shabby looking wagon full of straw and crates pulled by an even shabbier looking mule.

 

The kind man sat in the grass beside her with his own food and introduced himself as the Elder Brother. He told her about his religious order and then asked her how she came to be on the side of the river with a dying man.

 

Arya has been so many people with so many stories it took her a few moments to remember who she was. She sized up the holy man, biting her bottom lip in thought and trepidation.

 

_Which story should I tell him?_

_Who should I be to ensure he doesn’t hurt me?_

The holy man promised her that she would not be harmed; his order has no allegiance but to the Seven.

 

Arya wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t. Everyone she had trusted since her father died had either left her or died.

 

She decided she didn’t need any more allies to disappoint her, so she told him, “I am no one, but he is not my father. He is Joffrey’s burnt dog and he’s dying because he was too drunk to fight his brother's men.”

 

The Elder Brother nodded, then smoothed her hair down where it stuck up from the haircut Sandor Clegane gave her for the Red Wedding.

 

“When you are ready to talk, child, I will be there to listen,” he said softly.

 

She watched him rise and walked over to Stranger. She expected the horse to bite his face off; instead he allowed the Elder Brother to remove his bridle and saddle, then rub him down with a brush he found among the Hound's things.

 

***

 

Arya spent the rest of the day watching the men work on saving the Hound’s life. The two who do not speak took turns praying and assisting the Elder Brother with his task. The Hound could still swallow, so they gave him little sips of cooled boiled water and milk of the poppy. Soon he was docile and drooling on himself as he dozed. She watched in fascination as the Elder brother examined and bathed the minor wounds in boiled water, then opened up the bandages to exam the larger cuts. He caught her watching and beckoned her over.

 

“Are you squeamish child?” he asked.

 

“No!” Arya said too forcefully. “I once ate a bug to make my sister shriek.”

 

The Elder Brother chuckled and showed her Clegane’s leg.

 

Arya stared in fascination at the wound. The Elder Brother told her how he was going to wash some of the wriggling things out but let the rest stay to eat the dead flesh away so on the morrow he could sew Clegane up.

 

She asked if she could help and he gave her the task of fetching water to boil and holding a bowl of clean water while he worked. The other brothers said nothing to her, but she could hear them whisper prayers as they knelt by the Hound.

 

The work was exhausting, but the brother’s gave her food and that night she fell asleep easily.

 

***

 

The next morning Arya watched in horrified fascination as the Elder brother removed the maggots from Clegane’s wounds then dumped them into the fire while the other brothers prayed.

 

“See how the flesh looks like a fine cut of meat?” the Elder brother showed her. “That is healthy flesh which is what we want. Now please boil some water to assist me while I stitch his wounds."

 

The neck wound was easy to stitch, but it took both silent brothers to hold the wound on Clegane thigh closed so the Elder brother could sew it back together.

 

When they were done, they wrapped him in linen bandages that had been boiled the night before in clean water. She was amazed that the Elder Brother never used wine.

 

They finally finished around dusk. Arya went down to the river to wash the grime off her clothes as the brothers prepared an evening meal and prayed over the Hound.  When she returned, Sandor Clegane had awoken and was talking in between taking sips of water from an offered cup.

 

***

 

Arya made a point to stay out of the Hound’s sight as much as she could. He was weak, but awake and spent most of the night speaking with the Elder Brother. At one point he began to weep dry tears and the holy man wiped his faced with a wet cloth.

 

She was curious as to what he told Clegane, but was too exhausted to care.

 

***

 

The third morning the Elder Brother informed Arya that they would be leaving and taking Clegane with them. He also stated that she was to come with them, but could leave at anytime as long as she was safe.

 

She agreed because she had nowhere else to go.

 

Somehow the brothers got Clegane into their cart. He was too weak to lift himself up and promptly fell asleep when his head hit the straw.

 

To lessen the burden on the poor mule, the only holy man allowed in the cart is the one driving. Arya offered Craven to the other two, but they wave the horse away, preferring to walk. She tied her horse to the back of the cart and climbed into the straw next Clegane. Stranger refused to be tied next to the palfrey and instead followed unaided a ways behind the cart. Sometimes if he got too behind he would prance and whinny causing Clegane to stir.

 

As they left the riverside, a flicker of light from beside the tree caught Arya’s eye. In the grass next to discarded bandages and soiled straw lay Sandor Clegane’s snarling hound helm. She watched it grow smaller as they traveled along, till it vanished from sight.

 


	2. The Quiet Isle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sandor Clegane take some time to convalesce on the Quiet Isle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super angsty and I have a cold, so sorry about the lack of polishing.
> 
> Some OOC for both, but then again they are going in a different direction than in the book.
> 
> The next chapters will be a lot lighter.

The road to the holy brother’s home was slow going. Sandor Clegane was constantly fed milk of the poppy and the brothers had to stop every so often to rest the mule and replace the straw under the big man as he laid mumbling and drooling. Arya was instructed to give him water mixed with honey any time he was aware enough not to choke on it.

 

Sometimes he would sit up without warning and start shouting in a drug induced confusion.

 

Once Clegane grabbed one of the silent brother’s robes when he got too close and sat up as much as her could

 

 “Eleanor! Where is Eleanor?” he demanded.

 

The brother did not respond, instead he pet the hand clinching his robe like one would a nervous dog.

 

“My sister! My sweet sister! Oh gods!” Clegane sobbed “Please don't let Gergor near her! Please, I'll do anything!”

 

Tears ran down his ruined face as he collapsed back into the straw. He laid there sobbing.

 

“I couldn't save her, he was too big… I could save the little bird but I didn’t then she wouldn’t let me…. So I took that song…“

 

Arya scrambled up the cart to sit next to the Elder Brother as he took his turn driving.

 

“Do not worry, child,” the holy man said softly. “Remember how the maggots ate away the dead flesh so I could make his body whole again? Right now his mind is fighting the same battle, only it will be up to him if he lets the part of his soul that is rotting fall away so he can be whole again.”

 

The Elder Brother smoothed her ever wild hair down and continued; “A soul can rot as fast as the flesh and be just as devastating. One day, when you are ready let me know if you are willing to purge yourself of the poison you carry.”

 

Arya shrugged and watched the scenery go by.

 

***

Somehow they made it past the floodplain that separated the holy man’s isle from the mainland with all the horses and wagon intact. Clegane refused any more milk of the poppy so he could be awake enough to hold onto Stranger’s reins from his seat in the back of the cart. Every bump or jostle made he swear and cuss. Arya led Craven, even though she almost slipped off the stone path a few times.

***

 

A month after they arrived at the place that she now knew was called the Quiet Isle, Arya discovered that she had overlooked her two and tenth name day. It had been so long since she had access to a book of dates; it had been easy to miss. The brothers gave her honey cakes and berries, which she gobbled down gratefully.

 

 

Clegane had recovered enough that he could walk very short distances with a cane. She brought him honey cakes to his room after dinner and sat with him. Arya usually sat with him in the evening while the holy brother’s read scripture and sang hymns. They expected Arya to pay attention to the readings and sing with them, but she couldn’t sing and found herself squirming through the long drawn out verses. Clegane never asked her to sing and sit still. In the beginning he didn’t even talk to her. He would scowl at her and shut his eyes till she left. When he could move he would roll over and face the wall, his back to her. Arya didn’t mind; watching Sandor Clegane pout was better than having to act like a lady.

 

***

 

The first time he spoke to her was when she brought him the last cherries of the season.

 

“Why didn’t you let me die?” he asked in his raspy voice; red juice from the cherries stained his ruined mouth red as blood.

 

Arya shrugged. She didn’t know why herself.

 

“I watched you ride away, why did you come back?”

 

“I got down the river and realized you had all the money and food.”

 

Clegane laughed at that. He laughed till tears rolled down his cheeks and ruby drops of spittle shot out of his mouth.

 

“So the only reason you’re sitting here is because you’re too stupid to survive on your own?” he said at last.

 

“No!” Arya snapped. “I had nowhere else to go!”

 

Clegane watched her from half hooded eyes as he took a bite from another cherry.

 

“You could have gone to your aunt in the Vale,” he said evenly. “These holy men would make sure you would have gotten there.”

 

“They don’t know who I am,” she said staring at the ground and chewing her bottom lip. “I haven’t told them because it doesn’t matter. “

 

She looked up at him. She wasn’t scared to look him in the face.

 

“I’d rather be No One than Arya of House Stark. No One doesn’t have a murdered father and brothers or a lost sister. No One doesn’t care that her mom is dead because No One never had one in the first place. “

 

She stood up to walk out.

 

“Besides, Lady Lysa died while you were laying here drooling onto your pillow from milk of the poppy.”

 

The burnt side of his mouth twitched and she left him to his thoughts.

 

***

 

The brothers put her to work and Arya was thankful that she was too busy to think. There was a steady stream of refugees from the sacking of the Saltpans and all hands were needed to assist the wounded.

 

Arya learned how to clean wounds and bind cuts. She was taught how to stitch gashes and identify rot. Even though she has proved herself fearless and unshakable when it comes to wounds, the Elder Brother bars her from the most gruesome. She knew it must be bad because afterward he cried as he kneeled before the statue of the Mother.

 

One of Arya’s chores was to gather up the dishes from the convalescent rooms that held people too weak to travel to the dining hall. She was walking back to the kitchens when she overheard something she shouldn’t have.

 

“….. I couldn’t save her, Gregor was too big. Father had her buried in an unmarked grave thinking people wouldn’t know….” she heard a raspy voice travel through a cracked door.

 

She stopped short and leaned against the wall next to the door to Clegane’s room, cradling the dishes so they wouldn’t clink and give her away.

 

“Then there was the little bird….”

 

“The elder Stark girl?” asked the Elder Brother.

 

“I could have helped her, I was a coward. She was beaten by those so-called true knights and all I did was stand there like a statue. Then when I found her on the roof top I held my sword to her throat. I wanted her to understand that her ideas where wrong and her head full of songs was going to get her killed….. Then the night the Blackwater burned, I tucked tail and ran away. I drank till I couldn’t feel anymore and woke up in her bed when she came back to her room. I told her I could take her away, but she couldn’t even look at me…… So I held her down and made her sing for me….. but it wasn’t what I wanted… but I couldn’t take what I wanted because she was pleading for mercy and I could feel her tremble underneath me…..”

 

Arya heard Clegane let out a long shaky breath.

 

“So I took as much gold I could carry and got on my horse and left. I cut down all that were in my way.”

 

“Realizing you could not rape a trembling girl begging for mercy is not a weakness,” she heard the Elder Brother say.

 

 

Clegane let out a horrible barking laugh.

 

 

“If it is forgiveness you seek, then I invite you to pray with me,” The Elder Brother invited.

 

Clegane laughed again. “Bugger the gods,” he snarled. “They are cruel to give Sansa to the imp and stick me with the little she-wolf who wanted to see me die burning by that fucking red priest’s flaming sword!”

 

“The same little girl who you gave food and shelter to, even after you were sure no one was going to give you money for her? The one you wouldn’t let run into a butchers den at the Twins? The one who I found next to you, who helped me bind your wounds and give you honeyed water on the trip here so you wouldn’t die?”

 

“She wouldn’t give me the gift of mercy,” Clegane snarled. “Even after I taunted her, gave her reasons. She rode away and only came back because I had the money and food.”

 

“So you sit here, alive and recovering because of a little girl who could not survive without you.”

 

Arya felt a lump in her throat and her head spun. Very slowly she tip toed back the way she came and hid in a room with a sleeping man till she was sure the Elder Brother left.

 

Three months after they arrived on the Quiet Isle, Clegane started digging graves. With few patients, Arya was tasked with helping the brothers strip and clean the bodies that wash up on shore. The first time she saw one, rotting and bloated, she threw up. But after a few days, her nose shut to the smell and her stomach to the sights. Her nimble fingers easy undid water soggy armor buckles and matted clothing knots. Any coin they find went to the coffers for the monastery; but the Elder Brother promised her that when she chooses to leave, he will pay her for her work.

 

Clegane struggled with digging at first, but the more he did it, the stronger he grew. He was forced to wear the robe of a novice and cover his face even though he has taken no vows. At night while the holy brothers read and sing, Clegane (in much better spirits) taught her to play Cyvasse with a set left by a refugee of the Saltpans. Their games became heated more often than not and Arya danced around Clegane’s room the first time she won as he laughed and threw pieces at her.

 

In their eighth month on the Quiet Isle Clegane told her he was ready to leave. He could now walk without much of a limp and she knew he was practicing swinging his sword against some hay bales before morning prayers.

 

“Next moon, when the tide is strongest Maidenpool will be filled with ships,” he told her over their evening Cyvasse game. “The Elder Brother told me that he would pay me to guard the brother taking their cider there to sell. From there I’m getting on a ship. Bugger this place in winter.”

 

“Where will you go?” Arya asked, losing all interest in the game.

 

“Pentos, Braavos, the Summer Isles….” He waved his hand in the air. “Some place where I won’t freeze my balls off and won’t end up chained to a slavers ship.”

 

The big man took a sip of his weak cider; she had not seen him drink wine since the fight at the Inn.

 

“Mayhaps you should come with,” he said his eyes dropping to the board.

 

“To the Summer Isles?”

 

“To Maidenpool, she-wolf,” he corrected. “You could get a boat to White Harbor or the Wall. Go freeze your ass off with your bastard brother.”

 

Arya chewed her bottom lip in thought.

 

Both of them stared at the game board, neither moving.

 

“I’ll go,” she said.

 

***

 

The night before they left, Arya knocked on the little door to the Elder Brother’s hermit hole. He welcomed her in and offered her a mug of cider, then sat in his chair and waited for her to speak.

 

Arya knew the day would come when she would have to reconcile her past but when she opened her mouth to begin she surprised them both by bursting into tears.

 

As he dabbed a napkin at the salt and snot that ran down her face as she told of everything that had happen since Fat King Robert rode into Winterfell. She even told him of the things she did to Sansa before then. She blubbered as she spoke about Mycha and Syrio and how she had to walk over the bodies of her father’s men to escape the Red Keep. She whimpered when she told him about her father’s death, traveling with Yoren and all the horrible things that happened at Harrenhal. She confessed every death she wished, every death she caused and every person she had killed. She howled with the grief of the loss of her mother, her brothers and even over stupid Sansa.

 

In the end the Elder Brother held her and smoothed her hair. He told her that the gods grant forgiveness to those who can forgive themselves. He said a bunch of other things Arya didn’t hear, but just being able to tell _someone_ what she carried inside made her feel lighter than she had in so long.

 

Arya told the Elder Brother she felt like she had a hole in herself where her heart once was, that sometimes all she could feel was hate.

 

He told her something about the gods but then said it was her job to fill that hole herself. He told her it was her choice to remain angry or find peace and it made her feel a little bit better.

 

Afterward Arya crawled onto her straw mattress in the bee hive huts of the women’s quarters and fell into a dreamless sleep.

 

***

 

 

 

The ride to Maidenpool was not terrible. The brother that drove the cart was allowed to talk and seem to know an unending amount of pub songs. He told Arya he could sang them now, then asked for forgiveness later.

 

Sandor Clegane almost ruined the mood by explaining to her the meaning behind the _Bear and the Maiden Fair_ in crude terms and only using one sentence. The holy brother admonished him and Arya threw crabapples at him, but he only laughed.

 

On the second day they found an abandon apple tree and filled the cart with apples to sell alongside the cider and beer. Arya and Clegane spent the rest of the ride throwing their apple cores at each other over the cart (much to the brother’s distress). To Arya it wasn’t a fair game because she only hit Clegane once for every three times he got her and the one time she accidently hit Stranger he threaten to knock her off Craven.

 

They finally arrived in Maidenpool on the fourth day. Arya and Clegane assisted the brother with unloading his wares, collected their payment and wished him well. Even though she didn’t want to do, Arya sold Craven before heading to the docks. She needed the money and Clegane managed helped her get a good price (even though the horse buyer didn’t like that he never lowered the hood on his cloak so his face could be seen).

 

Afterward they stood on the docks and said their goodbyes, although neither of them was very good at it.

 

***

 

Arya spent the afternoon running from ship to ship trying to book passage to the Wall or White Harbor. Time after time she failed. Some captains told her the North was infested with pirates, others spoke of dead things in the water and people starving so much they had to eat their dead. Still others chased her off the boat or didn’t speak the Common tongue or just told her to fuck off. The last ship she came to was purple all over and the captain told her they were heading to Braavos. Arya felt in her pockets for the Braavosi coin, but once she found it her heart sunk. She didn’t know anyone in Braavos, it had been months since she had seen Jaquen H’gar and she had no idea if he was still there.

 

Arya stood on the dock, feeling lost when a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. She reached for Needle then stopped as a raspy voice said, “No luck finding passage to the Wall, I take it?”

 

She looked up at Sandor Clegane.

 

“No, but I was thinking of going to Braavos.”

 

“Who do you know in Braavos, she-wolf?”

 

“No one,” she admitted lowering her eyes.

 

Clegane sighed. “I have watched you run up and down these docks for the last several hours like a chicken with its head cut off.”

 

He pointed behind him, “I’m getting on this boat to Pentos.”

 

Clegane turned on his heel and walked toward the ship. He stopped a few meters away and even from under his hood she could tell he was looking at her like she was feeble minded.

 

“Are you coming?”

 

Arya ran after him and followed him up the gangway.

 

***

 

Arya stood at the back of the boat and watched Westeros grow smaller and smaller. Sandor Clegane stood beside her for a time before declaring “Bugger this land.”

 

She agreed and they went to the front of the ship so Arya could watch the dolphins swim in the ship’s wake and feel the wind on her face.


	3. Pentos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sandor try to find their way as they arrive in Pentos

They arrived in Pentos on the crest of a wave of refugees from Slaver’s Bay. Many bore scars from the Targaryen woman's dragon fire. For the first time in his life, Sandor Clegane blended into the crowd.

 

Even though they had worked their way across the sea (Arya scrubbing the deck and Sandor doing whatever was asked of him), they barely had five dragons between them.

 

Clegane found them a room in a rundown inn close to the docks. Every day he would ride Stranger out into the city in search of work and instructed Arya to stay in the room. She managed to follow his order for one day before she started getting stir-crazy and walked down to the docks. She thought Clegane was overreacting; she had Needle and proved she had no problem using it.

 

Arya had once overheard Sandor Clegane boast that he had killed his first man at 12. She had been ten when she killed the stable boy, so she had proven she was just as capable as he was.

 

Arya wasn’t even on the docks for an hour when she had her first opportunity to prove herself. As she watched a man feed large white pelicans the guts from his freshly cleaned fish, someone grabbed her from behind. Her assailant put one hand over her mouth, an arm around her waist and tried to pull her off her feet.

 

_Swift as a deer_

 

She bit his hand and pulled Needle from her belt when he dropped her. She lounged driving the blade into her assailant’s thigh before running away through the crowd.

 

Arya stopped when she thought her lungs would burst. As she stood doubled over and panting, someone laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. She spun around with Needle in her hand to find a stocky woman with a wide face and caramel colored skin. She held up her hands in surrender and babbled at Arya in a foreign tongue.

 

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Arya said not lowering her blade.

 

“Ah, you speak the Common Tongue,” replied the woman with a heavy accent. “What are you doing here by yourself girl? There are many who escaped Slaver’s Bay only to come here and bring their filthy habits with them!”

 

Arya thought on her feet; “My father is a sellsword. He is working, he will be looking for me, I should go.”

 

She meant to bolt but then the woman said, “I saw how good you are with a knife, would you like to make some money working at my stand?”

 

Arya looked at the woman, she was staring at Arya’s shabby, salt stained clothes and ragged hair. She knew she must look like an urchin, not the daughter of someone who cared.

 

“Why should I trust you?” she asked. “You just told me there are slavers around.”

 

The woman shrugged. “My husband and I deal in fish and fruit. We are from Braavos, we wish you no harm. It seems you should stay some place out of the way till _your father_ comes to find you.”

 

Arya chewed her bottom lip then replied, “Okay, but if you try to cross me, I’ll stab you like I did the last guy.”

 

 ***

 

The woman was named Bea and the man, Ontonio. True to what she said, they owned a stand that sold fruit and a wagon that their son took out onto the wharf selling raw oysters and sardines. Arya was given a job sitting beside a large crate of oysters and scrubbing the shells to make them look fresh and appetizing for the cart. By the time the sun dipped behind the buildings and the family started packing up the stand for the night, her hands were red and raw and she stank of rotting fish.

 

Ontonio dropped a few copper coins into her sore hands and messed her hair with citrus sticky fingers. Bea told her to be there at dawn if she wanted more money. Arya pocketed her wages and wandered back to the inn sore and smelly.

 

She found Sandor Clegane dressed in his soot colored armor unsaddling Stranger in the stables. The horse perked up as she walked to them, drawing Clegane’s attention.

 

He spun on her and roared; _“Where the fuck have you been?! What part of “stay in the bloody room” do you not understand?!”_

Arya trembled under his outburst. It wasn’t fair, she had spent all day with a wire brush scrubbing shell fish for a few coppers, he should be happy she was trying to help.

 

“Here!” she screamed, throwing her paltry wages at his chest. The coins bounced off his armor and landed in the straw.

 

“I’m sorry I can’t be like Sansa and sit in the corner like a doll, looking pretty and doing needle work all day!”

 

Clegane stared at her in shock. Fat tears were running down her face but she stared back at him with a hatred she hadn’t felt since he stole her from the Brotherhood without Banners.

 

He squatted down and pick up her coins from straw. She realized he wasn’t unsaddling Stranger, he was saddling him. He was preparing to ride out into the city to look for her.

 

“Hold out your hand, girl” he commanded.

 

She did and he dropped the coins into her palms.

 

He was crouched down enough she didn’t have to crane her neck to look at him.

 

“What did you do to earn this?”

 

“Cleaned oysters.”

 

He wrinkled his nose as if just noticing the smell.

 

“Who were you doing that for?”

 

“A Braavosi family who has a stand by the docks.”

 

Clegane’s eyes narrowed.

 

“Did they tell you to go back tomorrow?”

 

“Yes. At dawn.”

 

Clegane stood up and towered over. “I will take you down there tomorrow. If I decide you can stay, you will not leave that stand till I fetch you at the end of the day.”

 

Arya looked up at him with wide eyes.

 

“Do you understand, she-wolf?”

 

“Yes,” she whispered. She wiped her nose on her sleeve before returning her eyes to his boots.

 

“Go get a bath,” he ordered as he turned to take the saddle off Stranger. “You smell like a Lyseni whore’s cunt.”

 

Arya stared at him. Even two months ago she would have blanched at his vulgar words, but after spending time at sea and a day on the docks, she had heard so much worse.

 

“Been around a lot of Lyseni whores, have you?” she fired back.

 

His barking laugh echoed out into the streets.


	4. Interesting Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sandor get used to living together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all of you who are reading, I thank you.
> 
> I knew that this story wouldn't be very popular as there is more of an audience for Sandor/Sansa and Arya/Gendry, but I have wanted to write about the relationship between Arya and Sandor for a while. This will never be a Arya/Sandor story, it will always stay a Arya & Sandor story. Maybe I'll throw Gendry and Sansa in at the end :)
> 
> I still do not have beta so let me know if there any goofs I missed.

Arya got to celebrate her next birthday in her own room. Sandor Clegane managed to secure a job as a guard for a Pentoshi merchant he described as being so fat he was sure his job would be “mainly keeping people from attempting to harvest his blubber for lamp oil”.

 

Clegane was given the night shift, so he would deliver Arya to her job at the Braavosi stand when he returned from work and fetch her before his shift started. With the money he made they moved out of the inn and into a small two story manse built into the side of steep hill. The ground floor felt lopsided and it shared walls with the neighboring houses. It had a place for Stranger to live and a small walled garden that got sunlight for a large portion of the day. Best of all, for the first time since she left Kingslanding, Arya got a room all to herself.

 

When Sandor Clegane presented her with the tiny space on the second floor, she cheered.

 

“I don’t have to try to sleep with all your snoring and farting anymore!” she taunted him as he crowded her doorway.

 

“And I don’t have to hear your barking and growling anymore!” he taunted back.

 

“I do not!”

 

“You do!” he laughed at her. “You bark and growl and whine and howl in your sleep. You would wake me up sometimes thinking a wild animal was raiding our camp!”

 

She shot him a rude hand gesture, but he just laughed.

 

Because of their overlapping schedules, Arya and Sandor Clegane would always make time to eat together in the morning. Technically she would be breaking her fast while he was eating his supper, but it was the only time were they could sit and talk to each other. Usually they traded gossip and rumors. Arya’s job at the docks afforded her all kinds of news from elsewhere in the world and Clegane said guardsmen gossiped worse than washerwomen.

 

They feasted on fresh fry bread with roasted meat Clegane would get on his way home and Arya was allowed to take home any bruised fruit that had not sold the day before. They would sit at a wobbly table in the tiny walled garden chatting and eating as Clegane pulled the skins off of the grapefruits and oranges with his big meaty fingers. Sometimes she would get lemons and she showed him how to make a popular drink by squeezing the juice into a glass of water then adding brown crystal sugar from the Summer Islands. Arya would sip the sweet and tart drink and it would remind her of the smells coming from the bakery in Winterfell. One morning she fell into a melancholy she couldn’t shake; she didn’t talk after her first sip of lemon drink and barely heard anything Clegane said.

 

“Arya!”

 

She sat up straight. “What?”

 

“Were you paying attention to anything I just told you?”

 

“No,” she never lied to him. She would get in trouble regardless.

 

“Oh?” Clegane snarled at her over his food.

 

“I was just thinking about the lemon cakes Sansa and I used to steal when we were little in Winterfell. Well, I would steal them and she would eat them.”

 

Clegane chuckled.

 

“When our mother found out, she lectured us on having self-control. Then she told Sansa she would not help her let out her dresses if she got fat.”

 

That made Clegane let out one of his barking laughs.

 

Arya felt her smile fade as she wondered what happened to Sansa. Was she well? Was she starving or did had she become fat? Was she even alive?

 

Clegane broke her out of her thoughts by kicking her gently under the table.

 

“They are having one of those festivals where they hang lanterns on everything and the wealthy people float in the bay dressed in finery with musicians on their boats,” Clegane said cutting the bruised part of mango from the rest of the fruit. “I have tonight off, we could go down to where they launch the pleasure barges, get some fried fish and potatoes and watch the spectacle.”

 

Arya smiled weakly at Clegane’s attempt to distract her.

 

“Mayhaps we will get lucky and someone will have a tiff and shove their lover into the water,” he smirked as he handed her a piece of fruit.

 

 ***

 

Arya’s new found comfort living with Sandor Clegane hit its first major wall six months after they arrived in Pentos.

 

Arya was walking on the walls of the garden one afternoon as she had done a hundred times before when she slipped and fell into a bush.

 

She lay on her back gasping for breath when the sun was blotted out by Clegane’s hulking figure standing over her.

 

“Are you hurt?”

 

Arya gasped at him like a fish on dry land.

 

Sandor Clegane gently picked her up and pulled up the back of her tunic.

 

“You have had the wind knocked out of you,” he decided. “And probably a few bruised ribs.”

 

He carried her in the house and deposited her in her bed.

 

“You’ll be fine,” he stated as she began to cough air back in her lungs much to the protest of her ribs. “Just rest and we’ll see how you are doing when I get home tomorrow.”

 

That night Arya dreamed she was back in Kingslanding on the day of her father’s failed coup. She was surrounded by Lannister men armed with spears and they kept lunging at her, shoving the points into her guts over and over.

 

Arya woke up when Clegane slammed the door as he came home from his shift. She sat up and hissed, but the pain in her ribs was nothing compared to the one in her guts. She looked down to see her shift was bloody from the waist down. She reached her hand between her legs and touched her thighs. They were slick with blood. Arya screamed.

 

She remembered seeing people on the Quiet Isle who had no visible injuries bleed to death slowly from a blow to their guts. The Elder Brother had tried to heal them, but how do you heal something you could not see?

 

Arya was convinced that she had hurt herself inside and fell out of bed desperate to get to help.

 

Clegane was in her room before she gained her feet.  He took one look at her bloody shift and sheets before scooped her up and wrapping her up in his cloak. He was out the door before she could plead for help.

 

The only healer he trusted was the one used by his employer to treat the aliments of his staff.

 

The man was a little Summer Islander with cold hands and a warm tone to his voice.

 

He made Clegane wait in the garden as he poked and prodded Arya’s stomach to determine what had happened. We he was done he sat down and smiled at her.

 

“Girl, where is your mother?” he asked in thickly accented common tongue.

 

“She’s dead,” Arya replied truthfully.

 

“Do you have any sisters?”

 

Arya chewed her lip. “She’s dead to.”

 

The little man looked at her with so much pity she didn’t know whether to slap him or cry.

 

“My dear child, you are not hurt on the inside,” he said slowly. “You have… I do not know what they call it where you come from, but, I am going to go get my wife to talk to you and I will address your…. issue with your father.”

 

“He’s not my-“

 

The man waved her to silence. “I do not wish to know, please talk to my wife…”

 

The man’s wife entered as he exited. She was very plump and very cheerful. She spoke to Arya of flowers, the joy of womanhood and the gift from the gods that was baring children.

 

Arya just sat there pulling Clegane’s cloak around her shoulders burning with humiliation and pain.

 

The healer’s wife laid a hand on hers and asked her if she would be needing any moon tea or had any questions.

 

Arya snatched her hand back from the woman when she finally understood what she was insinuating.

 

“He’s not- we’re not- I’m a-“ she stuttered. She couldn’t bring herself to refer to herself as a maiden. _Sansa_ had been a maiden, Arya was just Arya. She had friends like Gendry and Hot Pie. Sansa had suitors like Joffrey and the Knight of Flowers. 

 

“He’s my brother,” she finished lamely. She didn’t like people thinking Clegane was her father; no one could replace her father. But at one point long ago she had four brothers. One more brother wouldn’t have been a stretch.

 

The woman nodded, but didn’t seem to believe her. Regardless, the wife gave her some supplies, showed her how to use them and told her where to get more.

 

When she finally let Arya go, she found Clegane talking with the healer in the foyer. She blushed so hot she thought her flesh would melt off her face.

 

Sandor Clegane didn’t look at her the whole ride home. Once they were back at the manse, he deposited her on the front step.

 

“I’m going out,” he declared. “You go inside and get in bed or whatever you need to do…”

 

Arya stared at the dirt but nodded her head.

 

Clegane grasped her chin and forced it up to look at him.

 

“I will be back soon,” he said. “Do not leave or open this door to anyone, do you understand?”

 

And then he was gone.

 

***

 

Clegane wasn’t back at supper time, so Arya defied his order and walked to the corner to get a sausage on a stick and some fried bread. She was having her moonblood, she wasn’t helpless.

 

The next morning she awoke to the smell of eggs and ham cooking. She shot out of bed in alarm; neither she nor Clegane cooked.

 

They had both spent their lives being fed by cooks or roasting animals over a fire in the wilderness. Turning a raw egg into something worth putting in your mouth was beyond either of them.

 

Arya crept down the stairs into the garden where she saw Clegane shoveling eggs and roasted ham into his mouth. A plump woman in a septa’s cowl and robes sat to his right sipping something out of a mug.

 

Clegane looked up at her as she approached.

 

“This is septa Aylace,” he said between bites of food. “You will mind whatever she says.”

 

The woman was pale with violet eyes and a sweet smile. Judging by the creases at the corners of her eyes and mouth she was probably older than Clegane.

 

Arya sat down and the woman asked her if she wanted something to eat. Arya nodded and tried to catch Clegane’s eye when the woman left.

 

“Where did you find a septa here?” she asked. The Pentoshi worshiped the Red God.

 

“Never mind that,” he replied. “You’re going to work only in the mornings now. In the afternoon, you will come right home and sit for lessons. She’s going to stay in the bedroom next to you; I am going to make that room next to the kitchen mine.”

 

With that he got up and without another word went to bed.

 

“So,” Arya said as the septa set food in front of her. “Where did you come from?”

 

“Originally Volantis,” the woman said as she sat beside Arya. “I was born a slave and lived most of my life with a man who owned a trading galley. When he died, his brother took over the boat. He wasn’t as good a person as my first master so I ran away and was taken in by a Sept about a half a day’s ride from here. Now I serve the Seven.”

 

The septa smiled and smoothed Arya’s hair as she shoved food in her mouth. The eggs were cooked perfectly.

 

“Your brother must love you very much,” she said. “He rode all the way out to the sept and spent almost an hour yelling at, attempting to bribe and pleading with the Septan for help before I volunteered to go with him.”

 

Arya chased her food down with lemon water.

 

“Are you going to make me do needle work and sit still?”

 

The woman laughed.


	5. Each Lesson Makes us Stronger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya learns terrible news, receives a gift and becomes aware of how Sandor feels about her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, please excuse any horrible, glaring goofs in this chapter. It's past my bedtime but I am desperate to finish this work! I love how the last two chapters have come together, but first I have to get there!

When she was ten and four Arya discovered what she meant to Sandor Clegane.

 

Clegane had been reassigned from the night shift to supervising the security on-board the fat merchant’s ships. He would be gone for two to sometimes three weeks at a time, but then be home for a fortnight before being sent out again.  With his new variable schedule he told Arya he trusted her to walk to work on her own, as long as she returned immediately after her shift for studies with her septa.

 

Arya found septa Aylace to be unlike anyone she had ever met. Instead of needle point and manners, she taught Arya math, laws, geography and languages. Arya’s bastard Valyrian was acceptable for selling fruit and purchasing goods, but useless for anything else. Septa Aylace taught her Valyrian (both high and low), Lysian, Braavosi and Qartheen . Arya was equally bad at all but Valyrian as she used it every day.

 

Septa Aylace liked to meet her down on the docks and walk around gathering news and gossip from other lands. In particular she wanted news about the Dragon Queen in Slaver’s Bay.

 

“One day no little girl will suffer as I did,” she told Arya with a deep sadness. “The Mother of Dragons is blessed by the Seven as her family has been since they escaped the Doom of Valyria to create the free Seven Kingdoms.”

 

Arya never thought of her home as being free, but she had enough wisdom at that point to realize she had never been a slave and to not question septa Aylace with her sappy ideas about Westeros.

 

***

 

Every time Clegane left, Arya would climb up on the roof and watch his ship leave the bay. Their house was high enough up that she had an uninterrupted view of the water and close enough to the docks she could see the backs of the boats. He always told her the name of the ship he was on so she could meet him when he returned.

 

Clegane used his own weapons and armor when working. A week before he was set to leave, he and Arya had a ritual were Arya would get up before dawn to haul his weapons and armor to the blacksmith before she went to work. When her shift was done, she would return to the blacksmith to meet Clegane when he went to fetch his cleaned and repaired equipment. He would then buy her fried fish and potato wedges and they would eat sitting on the roof watching the ships coming in on the afternoon tide.

 

One day she arrived early and used the time to marvel at the swords for sale. Needle still had a place in her heart, but as she had grown taller it had become far too short for her to use in water dancing. She carried a long thin dagger for protection, but she missed the thrill of sword play.

 

Arya was bending over a display of delicately decorated blades when she felt a sting on her left butt cheek. She whipped around to see a very drunk man smiling at her, he made kissing noises at her, then babbled something in Lysian. Before she could get over the shock that someone actually pinched her bum, the man’s face exploded into a bloody mess and he fell to the ground.

 

Sandor Clegane stood over the man. He barked out in Lysian;

 

_“If you_ <word Arya didn’t know> _close to my_ <word Arya didn’t know>, _I will tear off your cock and <_another word Arya didn’t know> _down your fucking_ <yet another word Arya didn’t know>!”

 

Then he bit his thumb in the direction of the man’s retreating form and yelled out something that could have been a curse or could have just been a growl.

 

He turned to Arya and asked with almost tenderness; “Are you okay?”

 

Arya nodded. He grasped her forearm and pulled her into the smith’s shop to pick up his sword and armor.

 

***

 

After Clegane went to bed that night, Arya asked septa Aylace about the Lysian words Clegane had used. The woman blushed, but answered truthfully; “He said "If you come close to my little sister I will tear your cock off and shove it down your fucking throat".”

 

Septa Aylace had a better constitution than septa Mordane ever had when it came to the cruder side of life; but Arya still felt bad asking her what the growling curse had meant.

 

“It’s a  insult from the Summer Islands,” septa Aylace blushed even deeper and Arya almost regretted bringing it up. “It means “You are nothing but the sweat off a baboon’s balls".”

 

Arya filed that insult away for future use and decided to not ask septa Aylace to translate anything Clegane said again.

 

**

 

Arya had just finished stacking crates of lemons when she heard the sailors speaking the common tongue;

 

“I heard he was only nine and ten,” said the first. “A bastard of Lord Stark, gods rest him.”

 

Arya stood stock still.

 

“Youngest Commander of the Night’s Watch in history stabbed to death by his own men,” said a second before spitting on the ground.

 

Arya felt like the ground heaved up below her. Bea grasped her shoulder and asked her if she was feeling alright several times. Arya merely stated she was unwell and asked if she could go home early. The old woman studied her face and shoved her out of the stall then shouted after her that she would have to work a whole day on the morrow to make up her time.

 

Arya didn’t care, she ran from winesink to winesink up and down the docks asking sailors of news from the Wall. Some said it was mutiny, some said Wildlings, some said a Red Priestess, but in the end the result was the same; Jon Snow was dead.

 

Arya left the last winesink in the late afternoon and vomited into the gutter.

 

Septa Aylace was shaking with worry when she returned late, but Arya ignored her. She didn't say a word just ran up the stairs to her room and threw herself across her bed. She buried her head in her pillow and let out a long wailing scream. She screamed till she was hoarse, cried till her pillow was soaked, almost vomited again off the side of her bed.

 

Arya must have fallen asleep because when she awoke there was a plate of dates and sour cheese next to a glass of water by her bed. She drank the water but turned her face to the wall and left the food untouched.

 

She had no idea how many days she lay in bed. It had been a struggle just to will herself to get up and use the chamber pot. She drank water and ate nothing. Septa Aylace brought in a healer who looked in her eyes, at her tongue and gave her a drink that made her sleep.

 

In her sleep she was a wolf, her pack stretched out hundreds strong. She was fast and sleek and felt no pain.

 

One evening she was shaken awake by a strong hand. She opened her blood shot eyes and saw Sandor Clegane’s ruined face hoovering above her.

 

“Jon’s dead,” she whispered.

 

“I know, I heard,” he sighed.

 

“They’re all gone,” she whimpered.

 

Clegane held her flat on her back so she couldn't curl away from him.

 

“And there was nothing you could have done, girl,” he told her. “Now get up and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

 

Arya tried to smack his hand away but he just tightened his grip. She took a swing at him with her other hand but he caught it and held her arm tight. She screamed at him in rage. She thrashed and tried to kick him, but he just held her down.  Somehow she got a wrist free and she swung her fist as hard as she could against his face. Her knuckled collided with his scars. The realization she had just punched the last person in the world who cared if she lived or died in the jaw made her stop. She went limp and panting on her bed.

 

Clegane moved his jaw side to side to make sure she hadn’t done any real damage, then stood up.

 

“Wipe your nose and come downstairs,” he said before leaving her room.

 

Arya managed to make it down to the kitchen where Clegane sat drinking pomegranate cider and feasting on a chunk of grilled lamb. He looked up as she came in.

 

“Do you want to eat something?” he asked with his mouth full of meat.

 

Septa Aylace appeared out of nowhere and hugged Arya to her bosom.

 

“I think I would like some lamb,” Arya said softly as she let the septa cradle her and babble into her hair.

 

Sandor Clegane speared some meat from his plate and set it on a plate across from his seat.

 

“Come eat,” he ordered.

 

Arya managed to find her way to the table and somehow remembered how to use a fork enough to feed herself.

 

They ate in silence for a while. Arya slowly regained her appetite and began stuffing meat into her mouth till her jaw ached from chewing.

 

Clegane finished his dinner and wiped the grease from his fingers. He rose without a word and vanishing into the room he had taken for himself by the kitchen.

 

Arya was guzzling cider when he returned with a long thin package wrapped in linen. He handed it to her.

 

This wasn’t the first time he had brought her something home from a trip; a trinket from Tyrosh, a comb from Lys, oils from Myr. This felt different.

 

“We stopped in Braavos to resupply after leaving Lorath,” he stated and gestured for her to open the gift. “Don’t fuck around with this, I had to have the boatswain help me haggle with this greasy cunt to get a good deal.”

 

Arya pulled at the ties and the linen gave way to reveal a long thin sword with a complicated grip and beautiful guard.

 

“Thank you,” she whispered.

 

“You can thank me by learning to use it past, stick them with the pointy end,” he replied.

 

Clegane plainly told her; “Tonight, you are going to take a bath. Tomorrow you are going to go down to the docks and beg for your job back. Then after your shift, you are going to walk with septa Aylace to the home of this water dancing teacher referred to me by the boatswain to learn how to use that meat skewer.”

 

Arya smiled.

 

“You’re going to use that in your lessons,” he said gesturing to the sword. “I killed my first man when I was ten and two, your old enough to use steel.”

 

“I killed the Ticker when I was one and ten,” she fired back. “So by the time I’m your age, I will have been killing longer than you have!”

 

He laughed at that.

 

***

 

Arya’s new dancing master had never been the First Sword to the Sea Lord of Braavos. He didn’t make her chase cats or tell her things like _fear cuts deeper than swords._ He was a tall, reedy man with a head of black hair pulled up high on his head and had a waxed mustache and forked beard. He was from Braavos, and was in Pentos because he had followed a lover. Unfortunately before they wed, they had a falling out and he stuck. It was the kind of stupid story Sansa would have thought romantic. Arya just shook her head and focused on her sword.

 

Things would never go back to the way they had been. Fear might cut deeper than swords, but the past tore her open. Arya quickly learned if she looked back, she would never move forward.

 

"Each bruise is a lesson," Syrio once told her. "Each lesson makes us stronger."


	6. Sex (Almost) and (Sort of) Homesickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya discovers sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is were the M rating comes in. I'm really not that good at writing smut, but have no problems writing an awkward sexual encounter!

 

The second time Arya thought about walking away from Sandor Clegane,  she was five and ten.

 

She knew she had a good life; she had a septa teaching her valuable lessons, she had a waterdancing teacher, she had a good job, her own room, and food whenever she wanted.

 

But Arya had become restless. Part of it was wanting to return to Westeros; there were rumors that her little brother Rickon was alive and the Dragon Queen had left the Bay of Dragons to take the Seven Kingdoms for her own. Septa Alyace was over the moon, and began to talk of taking a pilgrimage to Kingslandingto see the Sept of Baelor after the Targayen take over.

 

Another part was a boy.

 

Mercutio was Braavosi merchant’s son who was working for his father supervising shipments when he stopped by her fruit stand and purchased a pomegranate from Arya. He had wavy black hair, grey eyes, and was an accomplished waterdancer. They had flirted over fruit before he invited her to the theater. She accepted.

 

Arya ran home and immediately told septa Aylace all about the boy she met. She was much more understanding than her last septa and helped her do her hair and even bought her a gauzy (although still conservative) dress to wear. Sandor Clegane had been out on a long haul trip, she didn’t expect him back for at least a moons turn, so septa Aylace laid down some rules; The boy must come to the door so the septa could meet him, she was to not engage any type of physical affection and she had to come home right after the play. Arya agreed to all the terms.

 

Mercutio charmed the septa with his manners and promised to bring Arya right home.

 

Arya had been to the theater before with Clegane; they had purchased the cheapest tickets so they had to stand near the stage. Sandor would buy her some roasted nuts and would crush the shells with one of his hands to get at the edible part then through the shells at the performers with her if they messed up their lines.

 

They usually attended plays with lots of fighting, sex and fart jokes. They would laugh and throw peanut shells and enjoy themselves.

 

Mercutio took Ayra to a higher sort of play. The actors spoke lines as they fought and would talk their feelings to the audience. There was very little sex and no fart jokes.

 

They sat up in the balcony since his father was wealthy enough to afford seats off the floor. After the play, he walked her home and asked for a chaste peck on the cheek.

 

The next date was dinner at his family's house, afterward she kissed him tightly on the lips. Within two weeks, they spent their time passionately kissing in the balcony of the theater and groping each other in the alleyway by her home.

 

Arya knew he wanted more, and she was sure she wanted it to.

 

Once a week septa Aylace would leave in the mornings to go shopping at the market. Arya waited for market day and asked her job for the day off. After the septa left to go fill her basket, Arya let Mercutio in the garden door and took him up to her room.

 

They rolled around her bed, laughing and touching. She pulled off his tunic, he slipped his hands under her dress. He had a lot more experience than she, so she let him do what he wanted. The first time he touched her through her small clothes, she gasped. He pulled down her dress and sucked her nipples, making her moan. When he slid his fingers inside her she cried out in good way. He pulled away to stepped out of his breeches as she pulled off her dress. The he was on top of her , kissing and touching. He pulled her knees apart and she felt him pushing at her woman’s place.

 

Arya licked her lips and closed her eyes, waiting for the pain she knew would come.

 

But it never did, at least not for her. She heard him scream and Aryas eyes opened in time to see her would be lover being dragged naked as his name day out of his room by his hair.

 

She stood up and ran to the staircase in time to see a furious Sandor Clegane throw Mercutio out of the front door and onto the street.

 

“You’re not supposed to be home for a week!” she sputtered lamely.

 

Sandor looked up at her, noticed her nakedness and immediately looked at the floor.

 

“Get your fucking clothes on!” he growled at her.

 

Arya looked down at her naked body and ran back to her room to pull her dress back on.

 

She stormed down the stairs to find Clegane in the kitchen, pacing, still dressed in his salt stained leather armor from work.

 

He bellowed at her till he turned red in the face. He said things like, "As long as you are under the roof I pay for!", "You’re too young!", "I’m going to cut his cock off and kill the next one".

 

She screamed back at him things like; "I work to!", "I’m old enough to kill a man, but not bed one?" and finally “You’re not my father, you cannot tell me what to do!”

 

This stopped Clegane in his tracks and he retorted, “No I’m not. Your father’s dead, girl, but I’m the one who kept you _alive._ ”

 

They stared at each other for a tense moment, Arya chewed her lip and held back the tears.

 

Sandor Clegane crouched down so she could look at his face without craning her neck.

 

“You have two choices, girl,” he rumbled. “You can go upstairs and sit in your room as you will do for the next fortnight except when you work. Or you can tell me that living here with me is too terrible for you, pack your shit and I will put you on the first boat bound for Westeros tomorrow morning.”

 

Arya shook all over.

 

“Can I think about it?” she whispered.

 

Sandor Clegane nodded and straightened up, “But do it in your room.”

 

That night, Arya waited for the house to go asleep before sneaking out her window and onto the street. She made her way to where Mercutio lived.

 

She threw pebbles at his window till he leaned out and saw her. She called to him and he disappeared into the building, only to reappear a moment later coming out the front door.

 

Arya ran up to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

 

“I am so sorry,” she sobbed. “I didn’t know he was going to do that!”

 

Mercutio shoved her away and snapped; “Who was _he?”_

“He’s the man who takes care of me,” she said, lost for words.

 

Mercutio scowled at her. “So is he your lover or pimp? That holy woman threw me off, but no man _takes care of_ a woman and gets nothing in return.”

 

Arya’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed with hate. She swung her arm around and punched him so hard he fell over.

 

“He’s my brother you <Summer Islander insult that translates to “You are nothing but the sweat off a baboon’s balls”>!” she hissed, then spit in his face before turning on her heel and going home.

 

The next morning she found Clegane sitting at the little table in the garden and peeling and orange. He offered her a section as she sat down and she took it gladly. Septa Aylace was so furious at Arya that she placed breakfast in front of her without even giving her a greeting or a look.

 

  Arya rubbed her eyes, they felt grainy from lack of sleep. She knew it was going to take a lot of pot scrubbing and Seven Pointed Star reading to get back into the septa's good graces. Hopefully the gods were on her side. 

 

“So where are you going today?” Sandor asked as he focused on cleaning the sticky juice from his hands with a wet napkin.

 

Arya caught his eye and held it.

 

“To work,” she said. “But I would like to go back to Westeros when the Dragon Queen has settled down. Septa Aylace tells me she wants to see the Sept of Baelor.”

 

Clegane nodded.  “She can go see it herself,” he rasped. “It will be a cold day in Dorne before I set foot back in Kingslanding.”

 

Arya had to agree.

 

***

 

Arya’s punishment ended about the same time Clegane was sent on another shipment.

 

As per their ritual, they sat on the roof eating street food and watching the boats come in on the afternoon tide.

 

Arya’s confinement had given her time to think and one thing tugged at the back of her mind from their days on the Quiet Isle.

 

“Who is Eleanor?” she asked.

 

Sandor Clegane fixed his eyes on the horizon and answered, “My sister.”

 

“Where is she?”

 

“Gregor killed her.”

 

Arya’s jaw dropped.

 

“She was two years older than me,” he continued. “We were chasing each other through the stables when Gregor and our father came home early from a hunt. I guess she was giggling too loud or she shrieked at the wrong time, because Gregor punched her in the back of the head as she ran past him.”

 

Clegane looked down at Arya and told her, “The blow was so great that I heard her skull crack and she fell in the straw and never got up. My father buried her in an unmarked grave, no one said anything about her after that.”

 

Arya stared out onto the water and sat very still. Neither of them said anything for a very long time.

 

Without warning Arya surprised both of them by leaning over and resting her head on his bicep. He stared down at her in shock, but then looped his meaty arm around she shoulders and sighed.

 

“I'm not going back to Westeros till the Dragon Queen calms down and can be reasoned with," he stated. "I have no wish to be burned alive by a dragon because she thinks I am anything like my brother."

 

Arya nodded in agreement.


	7. Fire and Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sandor experience the beginning of the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta, read at own risk

 

Arya was six and ten when life changed forever.

 

 

Arya had long since learned to keep her love life private from Clegane. As she grew older, he had started loosening her leash and letting her make her own decisions. They still planned on returning to Westeros, just as soon as the Second Targaryen invation ran it's course. But in the meantime she had made friends and started taking her appearance more seriously. She still had lessons with septa Aylace (who finally forgave her for betraying her trust over something as stupid as a boy) and she was becoming so adept at waterdancing that she now went with her teacher to spar with his associates in addition to lessons.

 

One afternoon Arya and Sandor Clegane were enjoying the autumn sunshine out in the garden playing a game of Cyvasse.

 

She sat twisting her hair around her finger as she thought about how she was going to see her paramours at the theater that night. Arya was not so naïve as to think she would be able to behave thus when they returned to Westeros, so she figured she would experience as much of life as she could before returning to Winterfell.

 

She knew upon returning she would be married off to some lord (as Clegane reminded her often enough), even though she was far past being a maiden. She never discussed this fact with Clegane. After all she never questioned when he had purchase flowers and candied fruits for the pretty Tyroshi seamstress with hair the color of an angry sunset, so why would he question her about who she was spending her time off with?

 

Arya wondered what she would say when asked who she lost her maidenhood to; was it the Summer Islander mummer with the dazzling smile and sweet laugh Xahara, or the Pentoshi dock worker, Cam who had brown hair and beautiful eyes?

 

Clegane cleared his throat and she smiled up at him then refocused on the game.

 

First came the sound. It was a low rumbling she felt in her chest and the air pressure changed in her ears. She looked across the table to Clegane and saw him instinctively dropping his jaw; he felt it to.

 

Then the ground began to shake. At first it felt like the rumbling of a heavy cart going down the street, but then the table shook so hard the Cyvasse pieces danced around then fell on the ground.

 

Sandor Clegane stood and immediately pulled her under him as he crouched down. The shaking increased and she could hear things falling off of walls and shelves inside the house. The stone bird bath Clegane had installed in the garden fell over with a crash.

 

Arya heard septa Aylace start to shriek from the second floor.

 

It felt like it would never end. She heard loud cracking noises as the plaster covering the bricks of the house was shaken loose and fell onto the ground in chucks that shattered into a million pieces.

 

There was a noise like a crack of thunder and Arya craned her head over Clegane’s shoulder in time to see the multi-storied magistrate hall at the top of the hill collapse.

 

She screamed and Sandor put one of his meaty hands over her mouth as a cloud of dust washed over the garden walls, covering everything in a grey powder.

 

Finally the shaking stopped. For a moment the only thing she heard was her own ragged breath and the only thing she felt was the rise and fall Sandor’s chest behind her.

 

Then she heard the screaming and then smelled the fire and then tasted the dust.

 

***

 

 

No one knew what had happened.

 

The shaking had caused damage to their house in the form of cracked plaster and an even worse slope to the floor. It was the large temples held up by stone columns that suffered the worst. The columns where created by stacking pieces of carved stone on top of each other and the layers where held together by the weight of the roof. When the ground shook it broke the layers apart, causing the roof to collapse and killed anyone in the vicinity with falling rock.

 

The collapse of the main Temple of R’hllor resulted in the huge basin that held the sacred fire to spill burning oil into the street. People who could not get out of the way were burned alive and a huge swath of the city caught fire. Sandor Clegane hated the Red God, so their house was on the other side of the city sheltered from the fire, smoke and chaos.

 

Septa Aylace took charge over the household as she had lived through something similar in Volantis. She ordered Arya to go to the well and fill every vessel they had with water. Clegane checked every wall to make sure the brick still held true. The septa then sorted and rationed the food. Clegane slept in his armor in front of the door and shuttered the windows against possible thieves taking advantage of the disaster.

 

It was two weeks before anyone felt safe.

 

It was six weeks before the explanation came with refugees from Westeros.

 

It had been Aegon Targaryen; Rhaegar and Elia’s son come back from the dead, (or never was dead or was really a Blackfyre). He had invaded from Dorne and the Stormlands, whereas his aunt Daenerys brought her army through the Bay of Crabs in the Riverlands.

 

Aegon had told his aunt in a letter that if the Red Keep would not yield to him, he would unleash the fire of his dragon Rhaegal upon the city. He proclaimed they could build a new capital upon the ashes of the old. So Aegon rode his dragon at the head of his army of 4,000 sellswords up to the gates of Kingslanding and demanded the Faith Militant surrender the city to him. When they refused, he set to make good on his words by commanding the great beast to burn the city to the ground.

 

Unfortunately Aegon was unaware that there were thousands and thousands of jars of wildfire hidden under the city by Aegon’s grandfather.

 

The resulting explosion scorched the earth from Duskendale to Tumbleton. It burned the Kingswood and made the Blackwater Bay steam almost to Driftmark. The shaking of the earth was felt all the way from the Wall to the Dothroki Sea and caused a monster wave that completely engulfed the castle on Dragonstone. According traders from Maidenpool, the land where Kingslanding once stood was nothing more than a bottomless crater filled with green fire and smoke.

 

Septa Aylace spent every night praying for the dead and weeping for the loss of the Sept of Baelor.

 

Somehow Clegane sniffed out a skin of Dornish Sour and split it with Arya on the roof of their surprisingly sturdy house. They drank in silence watching the vivid colors the inferno had given the sunset.


	8. The Strong One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events lead to a hard decision

 

The second disaster is what finally broke Sandor Clegane.

 

This time it was in the middle of the night. The presiding noise made Arya fall out of bed, feeling like she had been knocked upside the head by a mailed fist. The floor in her room threatened to give way as she stumbled for the door. Sandor Clegane grasped both her and septa Aylace as they stumbled down the stairs and dragged them out into the garden just in case the whole house collapsed.

 

Any temple that had been in the process of rebuilding was knocked down again. There were fires and more people were crushed by the rumble from their collapsing homes.

 

Arya and Clegane had to wrap wet scarves around their faces to keep from breathing in the dust and smoke. The water from the well was full of debris and had to be boiled then strained before they could drink it.

 

The cracks in the plaster they had tried to repair in their home opened again, only this time the stress caused the brick to separate.

 

The sailors from Oldtown brought the news; an ancient horn full of cursed magic had brought down the Wall. They spoke of a wall of water caused by huge chunks of ice falling into the sea that washed away Skagos and Bear Island. Pentos and Braavos were protected from the waves by their deep bays, but Lorath was not so fortunate. It was a flat land and with shallow water; the island was almost completely claimed by the sea.

 

A week later the workmen Clegane hired to fix the house gave up and left declaring the house unsalvageable. This put an incredible amount of stress on Sandor as they took a good chunk of their meager savings with them. His employer had passed away from a poor heart and with so many houses beyond repair many people where leaving the city and taking jobs with them. Even the Braavois family she had worked with for so long had packed up and gone back to Braavos.

 

 

Arya wondered, not for the first time, if they should try to go back home. The eastern shore and Dorne appeared to be in good condition as was the Westerlands and parts of the Reach.  She had heard so many rumors over the years; Rickon was alive/Rickon was dead, Sansa ruled the Vale/Sansa was a prostitute in Lys, Jon had been resurrected and was riding a dragon against the army of the damned/Jon was a white walker just like thousands of others. Deep down Arya knew that sailors talked nonsense but still wondered if there was any of her family to be found.

 

There was one fact that stood in the way; no ships where going _to_ Westeros. The fires still burned in the crater that was once Kingslanding and now that the Wall came down, it didn’t look like anyone was going to risk their vessel traveling west anytime soon, if ever again. But there might be ships coming in; what was left of the traders and navies of the great houses would be bringing survivors to the Free Cities. Perhaps they could find one that was returning for more people.

 

Despite her optimism, all of Arya’s westward plans dissipated with the sudden end of her wolf dreams. One night she was running free through grassland full of brown men on horseback, the soft sound of tinkling bells wrapped in their hair announcing their presence. The next there was nothing, as with the next night and the next. Soon sleep only brought nightmares of the people she left behind. When she awoke she felt as empty as she had after her mother died. She began to tell herself there was nothing left for her, that returning would be nothing but a heart breaking mistake.

 

Arya knew Clegane wanted to go back. He hardly slept and when she prowled around the house with her own insomnia late at night she could hear him weeping. When he did sleep it was as fitful as when he had lay dying on the side on the Trident. Sometimes she thought she heard him call out her sister’s name in his nightmares. During the day he would wander the city, taking jobs moving debris or carrying heavy loads, but sometimes he couldn't even find the strength to leave the house. Arya would find him siting in the garden, watching the little grey birds that visited the bird bath. He didn't move and she would have to shake his shoulder to get his attention. For so long he had been the strong one, the one who made sure they had food and a roof over their heads. His work was gone, his home was beyond repair and even the pretty Tyroshi woman with the dark orange hair that he was always gifting flowers and candied fruit to had vanished under a pile of rubble.

 

At night Arya would sit with her back to his door, listening to the pain held by the man who had been so good to her, who had been her brother when all of hers had been taken from her. She knew it was time to be the strong one. So she made a choice, for both their sake.

 

***

 

“Quarth,” she declared unrolling the map in front of him. They were breaking their fast on ridiculously overpriced street vendor food as septa Aylace had taken the second earthquake as a sign from the Seven to return to the motherhouse and live out her days in silent prayer.

 

“Quarth?” Clegane repeated with his mouth full of flat bread and shaved meat. He had a dark circle under his good eye and she could see silver beginning to streak his inky black hair. The day after Stranger died, he began to show his age.

 

“Even after the fall of slavery it is still prosperous. Especially now that the Yi Li Empire has opened itself up to more trade with the west. We can find work. We can find another place to live.”

 

When Clegane did not look convinced, Arya slammed her palm on the table.

 

“Sandor!” she shrieked. “I know what you are thinking! I will not see you spend the rest of your nights searching every winesink and whorehouse trying to find a sailor who knows what happened to Sansa!”

 

His head jerked up, bloodshot eyes wide.

 

“I can hear you cry her name in your sleep! I can hear you calling for your ‘little bird’!” Arya tried not to burst into tears, she had to be strong. “You think I don’t have my nightmares? Every night I see Jon and Sansa and my mother and my little brothers calling out to me!”

 

She reached across the table and grasped his chin. She threw all her might into making him understand; “We can stay here in this tumble down house and become old and bitter chasing ghosts of those we have left behind or we can go to Quarth and live!”

 

The burnt side of his face spasmed. He looked at her as if for the first time, but nodded his chin into her hand.

 

***

 

And so they went. And he held her waist at the front of the boat so she could watch the dolphins play in the wake, never looking back.


	9. Qarth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor Clegane and Arya reach Qarth only to find life is very different than they hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long stretches of time between updates.
> 
> There will only be one more chapter after this, I would like to thank everyone who has read this story and enjoyed it. 
> 
> The comments I have received have really helped me take this story in a different direction from what I originally intended and have enjoyed writing it immensely.
> 
> This is the longest chapter I have ever posted, so I hope it's not too much of a mess :)

 

Two months after they left Pentos and five years after they left Westeros, Arya and Sandor Clegane landed in Qarth.

 

 

No part of life had been easy since they left Pentos. The first ship took them as far as Lys and the next as far as Volantis. The third ship took them around the ruins of Old Valyria. This was worst leg as Arya had to maim one sailor for attempting to grope her, and then killed another for sneaking into her cabin. Clegane managed to settle the resulting uproar with the captain by locking her in her cabin for the rest of the trip. The final ship was one from New Gys whose hold held treasures from the Bay of Dragons. When they finally saw Qarth on the horizon, Arya felt like one of the saints septa Aylace would tell her about. Each had to endure a long trial that pushed them to their limits, before they could get to paradise. When the harbor came into sight Arya considered jumping overboard and swimming to the dock if it took too long to moor the ship.

 

 

The city had overloaded Arya’s senses from the moment she walked off the boat. Almost all cities smelled the same to her; rank. But Qarth smelled of exotic flowers and spices, as if the place was so rich they could afford to sweeten the very air.

 

 

Huge displays of wealth were everywhere; from the intricately carved arches with inlayed jade, obsidian and lapis lazuli to the jewels and silk sold at the grand bazaar to the villas that towered over the city and even dotted the cliffs by the sea. Clouds of colorful bird flew through the towering latticework of the grand bazaar, flowers and trees were blooming everywhere. The grand arcade held statues of heroes of the city that stood atop columns of green and white marble three times the height of a man.

 

 

On her first day Arya walked through the grand bazaar. She marveled at the strange knobby creatures with long eye lashes and the look of a dirty carpet the Qartheen used instead of horses. She tried spiky fruit, spiced meats and a tangy cheese that made her mouth water. She fell in awe of the massive fountains and drank the fresh cool water greedily.

 

 

Everywhere around the city people rushed around busily selling, buying and trading. Even the beggars didn’t to have time to waste as they moved from one person to another.

 

 

 

Qarth seemed like everything she had hoped; prosperous, rich and full of opportunity.

 

**

 

“I want to go home,” Arya whimpered.

 

 

There was a crash and a scream from the room below the tiny apartment she shared with Clegane. The noise was followed by the angry voice of a man and the sobbing of children.

 

 

They had been in Qarth for a little over a moon. One thing Arya had not expected was the poverty caused by the collapse of slavery. The slaves still lived there, only now they paid for the same squalor in which they had once been forced to dwell. Their former masters paid wages in pitiful amounts while charging a substantial fee for the most basic necessities.

 

 

Clegane had found work as a guard at one of the villas owned by a member of the Tourmaline Brotherhood. He made more than he had in Pentos, but it had not gone as far when it came to housing. They found themselves paying more for their little room in a tenement than they had for their house in Pentos.

 

 

Clegane glared at her from where he sat on his bed. They had no real furniture to speak of; just two thick cloth pallets on two wood frames. Lucky for them it was so hot they didn’t need to sleep with blankets as they could not afford such a luxury. Clegane’s last wages had gone to rent and food so he was stuck maintaining his armor for work by himself. He had returned from work at sunset and sat across from her on his bed oiling and polishing his plate as best he could by the light of their single lamp.

 

 

“Home?” he growled.

 

 

Arya sniffled, then winced as the fight below them became physical and the whole building shook.

 

 

The building was merely the old dwellings for slaves who had worked the docks for the merchants.  It was crumbling in the sea air with walls so thin Clegane cracked the plaster with an elbow the first time he rolled over in his sleep. There was no real privy, just a trench behind the building to empty slop buckets, and every so often a dead body on the stairs or out in the dirty yard would surprise Arya when she would leave to search for work in the morning.

 

 

The roaches were so prevalent that Arya would search the damp sand along the city walls to dig up desert toads then let them loose in the apartment in hopes of pest control. It would work for a time (even to the point Sandor would stop complaining about the smears of toad shit on the floor) but then the toads would disappear and Arya would have to start all over again. Clegane would always make the same joke that the rats had carried them off, but Arya suspected it was their neighbors who suddenly had meat for dinner the nights the toads vanished.

 

 

Sandor Clegane hissed at her through a clinched jaw; “You mean Westeros, don't you? Where the South is burnt and the North is frozen? Where no ships go and even if they did _we’re at least six moons away from even the coast of Dorne!”_

 

 

“Mayhaps,” she whispered from her perch on her bed. The room was so small that there was barely an arm’s length between their beds.

 

 

He threw down his armor then stood up and began ranting at her; “I dragged you around the Riverlands then took you with me across the Narrow Sea to Pentos where it was safe! You dragged me to the end of the bloody world and now you want to go home? Where is home?! Westeros has been fucking _destroyed_! Your home has been fucking _destroyed!_

 

 

He sat heavily on his bed making the wood groan before continuing;

 

 

“Your father’s dead, your mother had her throat cut and your brother had his direwolf’s head sewn onto his body! Your sister has vanished into thin air! Your little brothers were killed by the same man who reduced Winterfell to a pile of rubble! _What the fuck is left to go back to?_ ”

 

 

Arya held her head in her hands.

 

 

"And even if we wanted to go back how the fuck are we going to afford that?! Just getting here cost us everything we had left from Pentos!"

 

 

_He’s right, coming here was mistake. We could have gone to Braavos or Tyrosh or stayed in Lys, we didn’t need to come all the way to Qarth. And now we live in filth worse than I did when I was trapped in Flea Bottom after they killed Syrio._

 

She had tried to be strong, but failed. The tears came even as she tried to choke them back.

 

 

“Stop crying!” he barked at her.

 

 

 

“I can’t! This is entirely my fault!" she cried, not caring that she was making as much noise as the people below. "We could have gone back to Westeros! We could have gone to Dorne or the Reach! We could have stayed the winter in Oldtown then sorted out if Sansa was still alive come spring! But I had to drag us to Qarth and now we live worse than the beggars in Flea Bottom! At least their shit ran into the Blackwater instead sitting stagnate in a trench behind their hovels!”

 

 

Clegane got up and sat down hard next to her. He shocked her to silence by putting his arm around her shoulders.

 

 

“A job,” he mumbled. “I have a job, you will get a job and then we can move out of this urine soaked hellhole and get another place and maybe hire someone who knows how to bloody cook to come feed us.”

 

 

He turned to her, “Would you like that?”

 

 

Arya turned up to meet his gaze and nodded her head. She sniffed and rubbed her face with the filthy cuff of her sleeve.

 

 

“Good,” he said giving her a squeeze. “You’ll find something.”

 

 

**

 

 

“It pays three times as much as my old job selling fruit did,” Arya said as she divided up their merger meal. Clegane was able to bring home scraps from the villa he guarded. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the rice and beans most people in their building ate.

 

 

“Guard work for a member of the Thirteen?” Clegane cocked his head. “You’re too small; half the children in this building could knock you on your ass.”

 

 

“His grandfather is part of the Thirteen. And it’s for his daughter,” Arya snarled back. “From what I heard in the market he would prefer to hire women because she’s flowered and become quite the flirt.”

 

 

“You’re still too small,” Clegane said with a mouth full of chickpea paste on flat bread. “Half the work of being a guard is looking like you could hand anyone their ass before they could breathe.”

 

 

“I’m fast,” she countered. “And I could beat three men out of five when we left Pentos.”

 

 

“That waterdancing nonsense is for dueling and theater,” Clegane said shaking his head.

 

 

“Then help me!” Arya snarled. “You need me to get a job so we can leave this shit hole! The auditions are in a fortnight, if you could train me enough to pass, then we can go live in a place where we won’t have to wonder if our neighbors are fucking or fighting because we won’t hear them! ”

 

 

Clegane looked like he was going to say something but a crash from outside made them look out the window. On the ground below two men were rolling around fighting in the dirt. A woman above them leaned out her window and screamed something before dumping her slop bucket out onto the fighters below. A man to the side of their window leaned out and began screaming at the women with the bucket.

 

 

Arya turned to Clegane with an imploring look.

 

 

He shoved the rest of his food in his mouth before declaring; “Get your sword. Let’s see how many times I have to knock your ass in the dirt before you’re ready for this.”

 

 

**

 

The day of the audition Arya was a ball of nerves. She would have thrown up on her boots if she had more in her stomach than chickpeas and rice. Instead she focused on not chewing her lip raw and standing up as tall as she could.

 

 

The audition was held in the grand hall of one of the villas that had been so large Arya had mistaken it for part of the grand bazaar. There were at least a hundred people around her of all shapes and sizes; from tiny androgynous fighters from Yi Ti in silk shirts and breeches to the tall brawny former pit fighters who found themselves out of work when the pits became arenas for the Grand Games instead of blood sport.  Arya was almost positive she was the only Westerosi and felt a strange comfort in that.

 

 

The first round started when a major demo and his lackeys matched up everyone with sparing partners and announced the rules; the first person to be knocked to the floor was to leave, the one left standing was to wait till the pair to their left was done fighting and then challenge the winner. Any shedding of blood would disqualify the fighter. The declaration of this rule caused a grumbling through the crowd. The major demo explained they were looking for someone with skill and self-control.

 

 

Arya was paired with a huge brown man who fought with a curved blade. He smiled at her with horsey yellow teeth and Arya set her face in a perfect mimic of the Hound’s scowl. A bell rang and they attacked. She was expecting him to use his bulk and force, so she used her speed and agility. She managed to get behind him and hit him in the ankle sending him to the ground with a grunt.

 

 

He growled at her as he rose, but soon he was marched away by two of the household guards and her new opponent stepped forward.

 

 

All morning and well into the afternoon Arya sparred with a small sample of the warriors of Essos. Most noticeably there had been a tattooed fighter from Lys who almost took her head off with a pole ax. Then there was a tall Southern Islander woman who fought with two short swords, but didn’t have the dexterity to match Arya. Lastly there had been a tiny man from the Yi Ti who nearly knocked her in the dirt because she was staring at the pompom on his hat.

 

 

By lunch Arya was dripping sweat and exhausted. She wondered if Clegane had to do something similar when he went out for jobs, or if they just hired him on the spot because he was muscled like a bull and brought his own sword.

 

 

After a short break the major demo announced the remaining fighters would now face members of the household guard.

 

 

Arya felt her stomach lurch, she had been weaving and dodging and counterattacking for hours, these people were fresh. In her head she question why they would want to see if a bodyguard could fight for hours at a time. Wouldn’t running away with your charge be smarter than staying and fighting?

 

 

She didn’t have time to contemplate this quandary as the guards started lining up across from the fighters.

 

 

The one in front of her had on different armor from the rest; the typical guard wore blue dyed leather layered with a silver metal plate breast plate and studded leather breeches. The man in front of her was armored like a Westerosi knight and fought with a long sword that looked like something Clegane would want for Sevenmas.

 

 

Arya took a deep breath and tried to imagine she was beside the tenement and it was Clegane in front of her, not this bulky over armored cheating rat.

 

 

**

 

 

Arya stormed out of the hall and was almost out of the villa when an armored hand gripped her arm.

 

 

“Wait!” cried her overly armored assailant.

 

 

“You knocked me on my ass!” she snarled at him. “Leave me alone!”

 

 

“Where are you from?” he asked opening up the visor on his helm. “What is your name?”

 

 

“No one from Nowhere,” she spat.

 

 

“Really? Because your accent sounds Westerosi.”

 

 

She looked into the helm to see a handsome face with large blue eyes that twinkled even as she growled at him like a dog.  He introduced himself, but she was too distracted by his eyes and her anger to remember his name.

 

 

“I’m not even a member of the household guard,” he was saying as she stared hard at him. “I’m a friend of his son’s, they asked me to help assess the potential guards. You caught my eye, you don’t look like a sellsword.”

 

 

“So you cheated,” Arya said heatedly. “You weren’t supposed to fight, but you picked on me because I’m not in shiny armor with a sword so big you could use it to spit roast an ox. Well done, now leave me alone!”

 

 

“Come back in,” he said.

 

 

“Too fight an actual member of his guard? To have a chance for a job you took?”

 

 

“No, I was thinking of food,” he said waving a hand in the direction of another wing of the villa. “I could get out of my armor and you could join me for lunch.”

 

 

Arya reached into his helm and flicked his nose. He let go of her arm in surprise.

 

 

“Piss off,” she replied and walked away.

 

 

**

 

Arya spent the rest of the day walking from stand to stand in the bazaar asking for work. Most looked at her dirty hair and sweaty clothes then shooed her away.

 

 

In the end she managed to earn some bruised fruit and vegetables by stacking crates for a vendor. As a bonus he gave her some old, hard dates and told her to come back in the morning if she wanted to earn some money. The wage was half what she had earned in Pentos but she promised to come back.

 

 

At dusk Arya went down to the ocean and spit the date pits into the water as she sat on a pier feeling sorry for herself.

 

 

 ***

 

 

Arya didn’t return to the tenement till after dark. Her mood worsened as she climbed the stairs to their room. Grubby children ran around her legs and she had to hold onto the greasy wall to keep from being knocked backwards. Somewhere in the building she heard a shouting argument and she had to side step a suspicious dark spot on the floor.

 

 

She banged on the door till Clegane unbolted it and let her in.

 

 

“She-wolf, what did you do?” he asked as she threw herself on her bed.

 

 

“Failed,” she huffed staring at the ceiling.

 

 

“So who is Vaylen Komnenos?”

 

 

Arya sat up on her elbows.

 

 

“Huh?”

 

 

“He knows you,” Clegane said gesturing to a large basket of food sitting on his bed.

 

 

Arya didn’t even pause; she dove into the food and started ripping into smoked fish, soft cheese and fresh flat bread.

 

 

Clegane swatted her face away from the basket so he could help himself.

 

 

“So,” he said with a mouth full of spiced meat. “Why did a man with a Spicer family name spend you a huge basket of food?”

 

 

Arya licked cheese and oil from a jar of olives off her fingers. “Spicer?”

 

 

Clegane nodded, sticking his meaty fingers into the jar to fish out some olives.

 

 

“The Komnenos family are one of the oldest families in the Ancient Guild of Spicers.”

 

 

“There was this twit at the audition who asked me out to lunch,” Arya said. “But I told him to piss off.”

 

 

“So you decline lunch and he sends you a weeks’ worth of food.”

 

 

“How did he know who I was?”

 

 

“When you went in to the audition, did you tell your name to a scribe?”

 

 

“I think so.”

 

 

“How many Arya Starks do you think are in Qarth?”

 

 

_Shit_

 

“I should have used a fake name,” Arya grumbled as she shoved more cheese into her mouth.

 

 

“He’s from a very rich family she-wolf,” Clegane said rooting around the basket like a truffle pig. “You should suck his cock so he’ll give you a villa.”

 

 

Arya scoffed and threw an olive at Clegane’s head.

 

 

**

 

Somehow the man with the bright blue eyes found her sitting by one of the grand fountains after her day stacking crates and sorting out bruised fuzzy green fruit.

 

 

Arya dipped her tired feet into the water and watched the surface rippled as she wiggled her toes. His shadow gave him away before he spoke.

 

 

"Thank you for the food," she said not looking up.

 

 

"You’re welcome," he replied sitting next to her. She looked him the face. In addition to large blue eyes he had curly black hair, high cheekbones and one of the close cropped pointy beards the men in Qarth seemed to like. He was decorated in shiny, thick, bejeweled wrist bands and had a small gold ring threw his nose that somehow made him look very dashing.

 

 

“How did you know where I lived?”

 

 

“I made some inquiries.”

 

 

“So you snooped around.”

 

 

“Not many Westerosi come here,” he said. “Least of all a woman from a house as old and respected as Stark.”

 

 

 “How do you know so much about Westeros?”

 

 

“I was but a young man when the Dragon Queen took The Second Sons and the Golden Company with her to reclaim her throne. When I reached of age I joined one of the companies that she left behind. There were many Westerosi in this company who did not want to go back to Westerso. They told me much about their home as I traveled with them. I even speak some of the Common Tongue, which is how I knew you insulted me yesterday. The term “piss off” is one not used here, even if it said in Valyrian.”

 

 

“I insult you and you send me food. What would I get if I punched you in the face?”

 

 

“You already flicked my nose,” he laughed.

 

 

She laughed, “I did.”

 

 

“Will you have dinner with me, tonight at my family’s villa. Tell me all about Westeros.”

 

 

“There is not much to tell, I haven’t lived there since I was ten and two.”

 

 

“But you are a Stark, tell me what you remember.”

 

 

She remembered her father’s murder, Yoren’s bravery, the terrors of Harrenhal, the death of her family and then the aimless wandering around the Riverlands.

 

 

For the first time, the memories did not cause a hole to open in her core. They still made her hurt, but it felt old, like the ache Clegane felt in the mornings when his would awake grousing about his leg bothered him.

 

 

“I will go with you to your family’s villa,” Arya decided. “I will tell you of my home, of Winterfell where I grew up and Kingslanding where I live for a time. I traveled across the Riverlands and into the Mountains of the Moon in the Vale before I left for Pentos. But I have nothing to wear, and am filthy. Surly your mother would not approve of such a ragged sight as I in your home.”

 

 

He chuckled then said, “I am the youngest of seven sons, my mother has seen me in a worse state than you find yourself. But if you come tonight, you can use our baths and I will make sure you have appropriate attire.”

 

 

Arya smiled at him and gently splashed him. A handsome rich young man had been enchanted by her (for some reason) and now was going to lavish her with gifts. This was almost as bad as the soppy ballads played in Kingslanding.

 

 

As if to drive the metaphor home, he snatched her hand and planted a kiss on the back. Arya sighed at the ridiculousness of it all.

 

 

“Then till tonight,” he smiled at her before standing.

 

 

He hesitated for a moment before turning back to her.

 

 

“One question; the page who delivered the food said you live with a great brute of a man. I have also heard he works guarding the villa of one of the Tormemaline brotherhood. Who, may I ask is he?”

 

 

“That is my brother,” Arya replied.


	10. Summer Breeze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 14 years after they left Westeros, Arya and Sandor Clegane find peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end.
> 
> This has been my favorite story to write so far. I hope you have all enjoyed it as well.

Arya clinched her eyes tight.

 

Slowing her breath she strained her other senses to ascertain where she was. She felt a soft bed below her, a cool breeze kissing her skin, and there was a faint sent of sandalwood in the air. She heard the breathing of the man beside her and the snoring of a dog sleeping somewhere towards the end of the bed.

 

Relieved she opened her eyes and saw a ceiling decorated with a mosaic depicting twisting vines and jasmine blooms. Beside her lay the snoring form of her husband and son. Her daughter was curled up on her other side, her curly red hair fanned on the pillow.

 

 

She sighed and dragged a hand across her face made slick with beads of sweat.

 

 

_A dream, it was merely a dream. This is your bed, this is your husband, these are your children.... Qarth, you are in Qarth._

 

 

Arya tried to go back sleep. She turned on her side and watched her daughter breath. She then rolled over and observed the back of her husband's head. Finally giving up, she slipped from the bed careful not to disturb the other sleepers. As she tiptoed past the foot of the bed, the dog awoke and regarded her with weary eyes. She bent down and rubbed it's sleek head between it's pointy ears. Nullified it curled back up and began to snore.

 

 

Satisfied, Arya pulled a silk dress over her shoulders and padded on bare feet through the curtained entryway to the courtyard beyond.

 

 ***

 

The stars twinkled over the ocean, the moon was a soft, thin crescent and the eastern sky glowed slightly with the promise of dawn.

 

 

The courtyard's tile was still warm under foot from the sun the day before. Spring had come (Arya's first) and the creeping vines and bushes around the courtyard sported huge pink flowers that gave off a sweet smell in the growing heat.

 

 

The jewel of the courtyard was an enormous swimming pool. It was ringed with statues of the Qartheen gods and fountains with water spurting from the mouths of sea horses, serpents and fish. The bottom was titled with a mosaic depicting the god of the sea consorting with a water nymph. 

 

 

The sound of tinkling water was soothing to Arya's troubled mind as she tried to recall the details of the dream that had drove her from her bed.

 

 

Arya dipped her feet into the pool. The water was cool having been recently piped in via the aquaduct. She pulled at the shoulder of her silk dress and slipped in.

 

 

 

She drifted to the center and floated on her back. The sky was still dark making the water inky black.

 

 

 

Arya curled her back and let all air out of her lungs. Her body slowly sank to the bottom of the pool and for a moment the world cease to exist.

 

 

She allowed herself to hovering just above the tiles relishing in the sensory deprivation.

 

 

_Bran was in my dream. Bran was calling out to me._

 

 

She had heard his voice, too far away for her to make out the words.

 

 

That was impossible, Bran was dead. Even if he had somehow survived he should be past his three and twenty name day. The last time she had seen him, he had been a child.

 

 

But she had felt snow on her face, smelled the pine, had seen the courtyard of Winterfell.....

 

 

The courtyard as it had been when she had left, six and ten years ago.

 

 

_It had been a dream, just a dream._

 

 

Having sorted her thoughts Arya pushed off the bottom and surfaced with a gasp.

 

 

She spit and sputtered for a moment pushing her brown hair out of her face. It hung to the middle of her back and had become a nuisance, no matter how much her husband loved it.

 

 

Arya smiled as she briefly remembered the haircut Sandor had given her when they traveled the Riverlands together.

 

 

That seemed a million years ago, now just a funny story to tell the children if they were behaving.

 

 

Still restless Arya began swimming from one end to the other. Sometimes she would use the long stoke her husband taught her and the children, occasionally she would float on her back watching the sky lighten till the sun peaked over the eastern horizon.

 

 

Sufficiently cooled by the water, she pulled herself up to sit on the tiled floor of the courtyard.

 

 

It took a couple of moments before she realized she wasn't alone.

 

 

Sandor Clegane snored in his sleep, stretched out on a chaise lounge like the dog he used to be a few meters from where she sat.

 

 

Arya stood and crept over to where he dozed.

 

 

She took a lock of his long salt silver hair and tickled his nose playfully. He snorted then swatted at her hand.

 

 

“Leave me be. I had a long night,” he sneered at her and she laughed.

 

 

"So you decided to come sleep out here?"

 

 

He opened an eye and grumbled, "I heard your splashing and decided I needed some fresh air."

 

 

Arya stretched out on the lounge next to him and felt the early morning sun warm her cold skin.

 

 

As she dozed, her thoughts turned again to Westeros. She thought about septa Mordane for the first time in years. What would the old bitty have to say if she appeared at her side at this moment? Arya was laying, outdoors, naked but for a dozen ruby bangles on her wrists and five gold rings in each ear right next to _the Hound_ who was only wearing gold studs and a frown.

 

 

_Completely scandalous!_

 

 

Arya chuckled under her breath. A sad little thought whispered to her as she drifted off; if so much time had passed that she couldn't recognize Bran, would anyone back in Westeros know her?

 

 

Arya was different, she could feel it. She wasn't angry anymore. She didn't hide herself behind false names and lie out of fear. Her family was alive and safe inside the villa.

 

 

She sometimes called the Hound, Sandor. To his face. In fact no one here even knew who he had been.

 

 

He was different to. He was quicker to laugh and smile. He didn't taunt or threaten when he was angry. Arya couldn't remember the last time he had killed anyone.

 

 

Qarth had changed them both.

 

 

***

 

 

 

Arya never thought she could be as happy as one of the dumb princesses in the soppy songs from court. She never thought she would ever cry from happiness but on her wedding day she had.

 

 

A year after he had asked her to dinner with his family, Vaylen of the family Komnenos married Arya of House Stark.

 

 

Her husband's family was happy he was marrying a foreign princess (even though her kingdom had not existed for many years) and he was happy to have found someone who’s joy came from fighting and fucking and reading.

 

 

Sandor Clegane gave her away. In an uncharacteristic fit of nostalgia for her homeland, Arya decided she wanted cloaks in the ceremony. Her new husband indulged her by having a maiden’s cloak with a direwolf made for her to wear to the alter and one with the logo of his family’s business made for him to lay upon her shoulders.

 

 

Arya was pretty sure they conceived their son that night.

 

 ***

 

One of the many unwelcome adjustments that came with being married into a powerful family was the demand for complete loyalty. When his employer found out that Clegane’s (supposed) sister had married into the Ancient Guild of Spicers, they fired him.

 

 

Arya’s husband made a few arrangements and found Clegane employment as a bodyguard for a daughter of an incredibly powerful Spicer family. Ironically Clegane now found himself filling the position Arya had auditioned for the day she met her husband. The daughter in question was a few years older than  Arya and had a reputation for being quite the hellion. Her bodyguards lasted less than a fortnight as they were fired when they were unable to keep her many lovers out of her rooms.

 

 

Sandor Clegane was extremely effective in keeping out the young men, but a spectacular failure when it came to keeping his young charge out of trouble.

 

 

The resulting wedding’s finery was almost ruined by the presence of a furious father of the bride standing behind Sandor with a crossbow leveled in between his shoulders till the completion of the ceremony. The bride's dress was very finely cut to hide her growing bump.

 

 

Arya found Sandor’s wife very pleasant and good humored, although she did have Clegane on a very short leash. All she had to do was shake out her long, wavy red hair then look up at Clegane with her big green eyes and he would have attacked a Dothraki _khalasar_ single handily if she suggested it might of made her happy.

 

 

Arya had always wondered how their marriage worked with Clegane being a penniless immigrant and his wife being the daughter of a powerful established family.

 

 

Her husband explained it to her simply; "She's the last of her family. When her father dies, she gets _everything_. While I'm sure her old man would have liked to unite with another family for business reasons, by marrying no one from nowhere she gets to keep her holdings and run her father's business as she pleases. All Clegane has to do is enjoy the fruits of her labor and give her as many pups as she wants."

 

 

Arya had treated her husband to a wicked smile, "Also keep himself fit and lounge around the house naked as much as possible."

 

 

Her husband had laughed, "This is Qarth, my love, everyone lounges around their house naked! In fact, I think you should do it more often."

 

 

Arya had laughed then pulled her dress over her head and whipped him with it.

 

 ***

 

 

The life of the idle rich seem to agree with Sandor Clegane, although his age was beginning to caught up to him. He was fat in places that used to be muscle and the good side of his face had deep creases around his eyes and mouth. His black hair had slowly turned white over the last few years. Whether that had anything to do with the mounting amount of children he and his pretty young wife where whelping remained to be seen.

 

 

Unlike her husband, Sandor refused to adorn himself in the babbles worn by the upper class men of Qarth. He had growled at his wife when she had purchased gold rings for his meaty fingers and chains with heavy jeweled pendents to wear around his neck.

 

 

Arya was sure they would divorce the first time she tried to get him to wear a ring through his nose. Arya had tried to console him by telling him where her husband wore a gold ring, but that just led to him making her promise not to give his wife _ideas_.

 

 

In the end he agreed to a thin gold stud in each ear and took to wearing huge steel bangles on each wrist.

 

 

Arya sometimes mused on the first time they had to attend a garden party after Sandor had married his wife. He always had a hard time looking at Arya when she wore her Qartheen gowns that were cut to leave one breast bare. She had snickered at his jewelry.

 

 

Arya's husband had found the whole experience extremely amusing. He complimented Sandor's adornments loudly and made sure to point at Arya's uncovered breast every time he talked with Clegane to draw his eye. Surprisingly they made through the afternoon with little incident; although Clegane did pay the porters who carried their litter to dump Arya's husband in one of the street fountains on the way home.

 

***

 

After their wedding, Arya and her husband had taken up residence in a wing of his family's palace. Even though their home was the size of Maegar's Holdfast, Arya began to feel smothered by his family when the children were born. To keep his wife from giving his mother "a little poke" with her sword, Arya's husband appealed to Sandor's wife to let them live with them.

 

Clegane's goodfather had gifted them a villa the size of Wintertown that overlooked the ocean. It had huge rooms filled with plush furnishings, fountains, gardens and swimming pools. It even had a direct feed from the nearby aquaduct. The gardens were filled with plants from all over the world and exotic birds wandered the grounds screeching and twittering at the children who enjoyed chasing after them.

 

 

Sandor had been enthusiastic about the idea. Arya believed it had to do with the need for more adult contact. His first child had just learned to speak and Sandor had off handily said he was looking forward to a conversation where the other person could articulate more words than "no".

 

 

Arya had laughed at him and had replied that he must remember their time living together differently than she did.

 

 

***

 

 

The sun was above the ocean when Arya stirred again. The pitter-patter of tiny bare feet announced they no longer had the courtyard to themselves.

 

 

“Father watch me!” shrieked Eleanor as she jumped into the pool. Cool water hit Arya and made her gasp.

 

 

“Sorry aunt Arya!” the little girl called as she brushed her black hair out of her eyes.

 

 

“I’m sure you are!” Arya called back.

 

 

“Ahoy, you evil mermaid!” Arya’s husband strode from the curtained door of the villa. He was naked except for the clinking gold bracelets on his arms and a jade ring in his nose. He had been learning the Common Tongue by reading books of Westerosi stories to their children at night. Sometimes he mixed up the words, but Arya never corrected him.

 

 

Eleanor squealed as he jumped in the water. The commotion had awakened the other inhabitants of the villa and soon the pool was filled with Clegane’s twin boys and Arya’s son and daughter.

 

 

“Father! Aunt Arya! Join us!” called one of Clegane’s brood.

 

 

“Not now,” grumbled Sandor as he covered his eyes with one of his arms. “Your mother had me up all night with your baby sister.”

 

 

Arya chuckled. Since they both were from such a large families, Arya and her husband had decided to stop having children after their boy and girl were born.

 

 

Sandor’s wife on the other hand was an only child and wished to fill the villa with the little brothers and sisters she never had.

 

 

The sounds of happy children muffled her earlier malaise and Arya let her son and husband pull her into the pool. Clegane finally acquiesced when his wife joined them with a rambunctious baby girl on her hip.

 

 

 Arya splashed and let her husband drag her underwater. She chit-chatted with Sandor’s wife as the eldest children rode on their father’s shoulders while trying to shove each other in the water.

 

 

By mid-morning the children began demanding food. Arya helped dry then pull clothes on each squirming child. Clegane’s wife expertly corralled the youngsters to the dining area for sweet pastries and fruit as the fathers donned silk tunics and breeches before joining the meal. Arya retrieved her dress and pulled it over her head.

 

 

As she sat down at the table with her brood, Arya felt considerably calmer than she had when she awoke. The after effects of her dream vanished like a mist burned off of the ocean’s surface by the rising sun.

 

***

 

That night as they lounged in the ocean breeze on richly covered cushions enjoying figs and soft cheese, one of her husband’s business associates started talking of Westeros.

 

 

“Summer is coming and the whole continent will be in need of everything they can get from the east,” the merchant said. “They have gone without so much for so long that we could make a fortune selling medicine from the Jade Sea, rich fabrics from the Bay of Dragons and Spice from your family’s holdings.”

 

 

Arya felt her stomach drop. She hazard a glance at Sandor and saw his brow crease in thought.

 

 

“Such conversation of business is bad for digestion,” chirped Sandor’s pretty little wife. She had been a merchant’s daughter; she knew what to say to manipulate businessmen while playing at being a good hostess.

 

 

“Let us speak of the games in Meeren,” she chirped. “I would love to hear how the representatives of Qarth did in the racing and wrestling matches!” Then she distracted Clegane by licking the sweet fig juice from her fingers with her little pink tongue.

 

 

 

Afterward as their spouses talked business with their company, Arya found herself watching the sunset over the bay.

 

 

She heard Clegane’s heavy footsteps on the tile floor as he came up behind her and laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.

 

 

“Arya,” he rasped. “Are you alright?”

 

 

Arya's dream whispered to her from the corner of her mind.

 

 

“Do you ever think about it?” she turned to face him. “About going back home?”

 

 

 She flinched at her own words; painful memories bubbled to the surface of her mind of what a home Westeros had been to her.

 

 

Sandor seemingly sensing her distress grasped her chin and tilt it up so she looked him in the face.

 

 

“Silly wolf-bitch,” he rasped. “We are home.”

 

 

Arya wrapped her arms around his middle and buried her face in the silk of his tunic.

 

 

“Big dumb dog,” she whispered and Sandor hugged her back, while ruffling her hair.

 

 

The feel of snow, the smell of pine, the sounds of the courtyard of Winterfell settled back into the depths of her memory.

 

 

Now in this moment, on the other side of the world she breathed in the scent of burning jasmine and tasted the salt in the evening air. Somewhere in the villa she heard the laughing of the children that should have been asleep hours ago.

 

 

_I am Arya of House Stark. And I am home._

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?


End file.
